Jim’s theme for this week is "music by Canadian musicians." I have Arlee Bird to thank for introducing me, in a way, to the music of Bruce Cockburn (pronounced "Coburn"). A while back, every time I’d publish a playlist and solicit the name of other songs that fit, Arlee would almost always suggest a song by Cockburn. Having learned that he was from Ottawa, Ontario (Canada’s Washington, DC) sealed the deal.

Cockburn wrote "Lovers In A Dangerous Time" and recorded it on his 1984 album, Stealing Fire. It was a Top 40 hit for him, peaking at #25 on the Canadian charts in August. YouTuber Robin Gladstone has this to say about the song six years ago:

He wrote this while walking with his then five year old daughter. He was gloomy about the state of the world and wondered how it would be for her in coming years.He was inspired by her innocence and fascination with the world.

The song has also been done by Dan Fogelberg on his 1990 album The Wild Places, and by Barenaked Ladies on the 1991 Cockburn tribute album Kick At The Darkness.

The lyrics, from AZLyrics:

Now for a bonus, here’s guitarist Lenny Breau, who was born in Maine but lived in New Brunswick and Manitoba and is in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He starts with an improvisation followed by Toots Thielemans’s "Bluesette."

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday and Song of the Day for September 20, 2020.

Jim has us doing this week’s songs on "contrasts," and I’m going with my first idea. I’m not sure if someone else will use this, nor do I especially care: I love the song, the composer, and the singer.

"Night And Day" was written by Cole Porter for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce. Fred Astaire introduced the song, and his recording of it with the Leo Reisman Orchestra topped the charts of the day for eleven weeks. Astaire reprised his role in 1934 for the movie The Gay Divorcee, which also starred Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes, and sang it there as well. It’s one of Porter’s greatest contributions to The Great American Songbook, "the canon of significant early-20th-century American jazz standards and popular songs," as The Blogger’s Best Friend™ tells us.

In my opinion, no one sang the standards like Ella Fitzgerald. After Norman Granz, her manager, created Verve Records in 1956, she produced a series of "Songbook" albums that covered most of the songs in the Great American Songbook. The first was an album of the music of Cole Porter, and naturally it included "Night And Day."

Lyrics courtesy of YouTube user uzomad:

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday and Song of the Day for September 13, 2020.

Today’s topic, as Jim will tell you, is "musical/opera." This is pretty easy for me, as a lot of songs from musicals have become standards, songs that performers from many different genres will generally have in their repertoires, particularly jazz musicians.

One such standard is "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise," from the musical The New Moon, which was written by Sigmund Romberg (composer) and Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab (lyrics and book). It was first presented on Christmas Eve 1927 in Philadelphia, and was the third and last of three musicals that Romberg wrote in the style of Viennese operetta, the previous two being 1924’s The Student Prince and 1926’s The Desert Song.

I’ve been interested in Romberg’s work since seeing the 1955 movie of his life, Deep In My Heart, which starred José Ferrer as the composer. The movie itself was a biopic with numerous scenes from Romberg’s musicals, including a scene from his show That Midnight Girl where Ferrer and his very pregnant wife, Rosemary Clooney, danced with each other. (Based on the timing, she was probably expecting their son Miguel, who was in at least one of the Hot Shots! movies, Crossing Jordan, and NCIS: Los Angeles.)

Anyway, I first heard this when George Benson covered it on his 2004 album Irreplaceable. That being an instrumental, I couldn’t use it here, but there is a veritable plethora of recordings by vocalists, including Frank Sinatra. But you know me, I had to go with the oldest recording I could find, a 1929 recording by Nat Shilkret and The Victor Orchestra, with the vocal provided by Franklyn Baur. The vocal itself doesn’t start until 1:20, so be patient…

The lyrics, from MetroLyrics:

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday, and Song of the Day, for September 6, 2020.

So today, Jim has given us "cruel, evil, horrible, monster, wicked" as our prompts, and of course my mind heads to the West Side and the song stylings of Chester Arthur Burnett, better known to one and all as Howlin’ Wolf. "Evil (Is Going On)" was written by the Poet Laureate of the Blues, Willie Dixon, and recorded by Wolf in 1954. Besides Howlin’ Wolf on vocal and harmonica, that recording featured Wolf’s longtime sideman, Hubert Sumlin, and Jody Williams on guitars, Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon himself on double bass, and Earl Phillips on drums.

The lyrics, from MetroLyrics:

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday and Song of the Day for August 30, 2020.